Cave Dwellers of the East Sahara
This text was inspired by questions raised during my research for my Atlantis records. Reading from Herodotus, I was intrigued by the passage mentioning a ethnic group of people that were not only strange to behold, they also run faster than horses. This is what I found:
The 1500’s were the golden age of maritime exploration, going boldly where no man has gone before.
But were they?
Europeans are still taking all the credit of being the first to go out into the unknown. However, the unknown was not that unknown after all. The maps they used were made from older maps, sometimes much older, that were copied again and again, kept secret as treasures, having as much worth as the promising lands they depict. Their motivations were varied but based in the need for a new and safe trade route to the East. Toward the end of the 14th century, the vast empire of the Mongols was breaking up; because of this, Western merchants could no longer hope for safe passage along the land routes. Moreover, the Ottoman Turks and the Venetians controlled the Mediterranean trade, and this also included the ancient sea routes from the East. And finally, there were nations on the Atlantic shores of Europe that were covertly acquiring, studying and reproducing old maps, while at the same time developing new maritime technologies both in orientation as in ship building, exactly for such an event as this embargo on trade with the east. But there was a more obscure purpose in this new obsession over the sea, the search for Prester John’s country. A mystical country whose first reference appeared in 1145 and continued to appear here and there up to the beginning of the 17th century. A powerful Christian country that was like the Gaulish village of Asterix, resisted and kept resisting against the Moorish realms around its bounds. His kingdom was seen as a crucial strategic point for the crusades. It was never found. But back to the point, Ocean exploration and the search of new lands.
From old exploration reports, we know of ocean voyages that pre-date, in the very least, the European maritime epoch by 500yrs, some by 1000yrs, that are often purposelessly ignored by academics. It was in one of this reports, that I found the first and oldest known description of the ethic group I discuss in this video.
Hanno, a famous Carthaginian sailor from the sixth century BCE, conducted a voyage of exploration and colonization to the west coast of Africa. He set sail with 60 vessels of 50 oars, holding 30,000 men and women that settling along the way, founded cities and trade centres. He evidently reached the coast of present Gambia or of Sierra Leone and may have ventured as far as Cameroon. We know that one account of his voyage was written in the temple of Baal at Carthage and survives still preserved in a 10th-century-AD Greek manuscript known as The Periplus of Hanno, which claims to be an ancient Greek translation from the Punic inscription. Modern scholars, obviously, doubt whether Hannon actually continued beyond Morocco.
In Periplus of Hannon, we read how he met the Lixites, who lived in a fertile part of Morocco’s east coast in what was the beginning of a trade route that led through the Sahara. The Lixites, while systematically describing the lands outside their own borders to Hanno, told him that beyond the mountains, there was a land where a strange kind of people lived, “cave men who run faster than horses”. but this was not the only episode of strange creatures that Hanno reported. Attesting for a global presence of primitive beings during this time, at the end of this classical work, we read about an island populated with hairy and savage people. How all attempts to capture the male failed. Finally, they manage to capture three of the women, however they were as untameable as only a savage beast is when caged, they eventually found themselves forced to kill them or perish at their hands, they flayed them and their skins where brought home to Carthage. These were kept and displayed in the Temple of Juno and, according to Pliny the Elder, survived until the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, some 350 years after Hanno’s expedition. Modern days academics think that to be true, but to them, the creatures mentioned were Gorillas. But I would risk saying that an experienced man like Hanno, would not mistake an ape for a woman, as it was described. However, these beings are not the subject of this video. So lets return to the Cave Dwellers of the Fezzan region.
A century past Hanno reports, Herodotus offers similar information and added details, this is from the translation of A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Of 1920. Saying:
“These Garamantes go in their four-horse chariots chasing the cave-dwelling Ethiopians: for the Ethiopian cave-dwellers are swifter of foot than any men of whom tales are brought to us. They live on snakes and lizards and such-like creeping things. Their speech is like no other in the world: it is like the squeaking of bats.”
Latter in the 2ªCE BC, Agatharchides described the Cave-Dwellers of the west coast of the Red Sea as a barbarous people, who wore little clothing, had wives in common, and put to death the aged and the infirm. Reporting them as living on the produce of their flocks and herds alone.
The Greek geographer Strabo, also gives us a description of these mysterious ethnic groups that made use of the shallow caves.
- These cave-dwellers live in clans, had their wives in common, could go to war with other clans about pasturage, fighting with clubs, spears, and bows. They wore skins, lived on a diet of meat, and buried their dead under heaps of stones.
I would consider safe to say that all of them are referring to the cave-like abris in the desert. But first lets dive into some definitions. Cave-like abris is the academic abbreviation for rock shelter, a rock-house, a crepuscular cave, a bluff shelter, or… abri, that is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. Contrary to solutional caves or karst, which are often many miles long, rock shelters are almost always modest in size and extent.
Academics are well aware of these abris, but refuse any connection to a permanent culture, attributing their occupation to nomads who stayed in these caves temporarily, either because of water that might be found there, or even to look for food. They speculate that these were places where some plants and the occasional tree could be found, or even if only because of shade. Bees have also been attested and their nests can still be seen. Has such, their search ends there and due to the absence of interdisciplinary discussion, further progression in this field is unlikely, especially when these communities were promptly described as stone age pastoralists. End of debate.
In my search for reports, I soon found out that the Greeks, mainly their geographers, called all these Cave-Dwellers and the other mentioned strange beings, as Troglodytae. Not taking into account that they were using one name for what clearly was a very dispersed, and culturally different set of people being equally named for their apparent uncivilized ways, and in these case with no abodes but caves, to the Greeks, these beings were not exclusive of the African country, since they also used it to name a tribe of Moesia, on the banks of the river Danube.
But there is more to this Troglodytae than being swift of feet and strange to behold.
It seems safe to say that these apparently primitive people were in the very least, the creator artists responsible for some, if not most of what can be found in more than 10000 sites both in exposed stone and in abris, that attest for a very long occupation of the Fezzan area. This was evident since the changes of the object in their art, reflects different environmental periods of the Sahara, that are represented, identified, and divided into six Schools of art, that have hundreds of different styles.
By the time these works of art were discovered, those that studied them were amazed and confused by what they depict. After all, written sources describe Libya as arid, and yet, among the reliefs and paintings they could clearly see representations of crocodiles, hippopotamuses, and even swimmers. Academics were forced to the conclusion that these works of art belonged to a period in which the Sahara was still fertile. Something that was latter confirmed by Paleo-Climatology.
The oldest of this periods is the Bubalus or Graffiti Period: dating from 10000–9000 BC that places it well into the after match of the Younger Dryas. This school is recognizable by its representations of large wild animals, specifically of the now extinct long-horned buffalo and also by Shamanic scenes of sexually induced religious ceremonie,s that were discovered on the banks of the great valleys, in spots specifically selected for the practice of magical rites or worship. This initial phase is also known as the Wild Fauna Period, characterised by dynamic paintings as well as engravings of wild animals including rhinoceroses, crocodiles, felines, hippopotamuses, giraffes, wild asses, and the mentioned long-horned buffaloes.
This was then followed by The Round Head period lasting from 9000–6000 BC. Human figures, sometimes as high as 15 feet, present featureless faces in large round heads atop highly stylised bodies, accompanied by strange symbols. The art of this period is of high quality and shows a level of sophistication not found anywhere else in the Sahara, including scenes of various social activities, as war and hunting. This cryptic anthropomorphic representations have many times been used as evidence for alien visitation. After all the papers, articles and book pages I read for this video, I now have a slightly more educated perspective about the authors of this images, and aliens seem somewhat unnecessary to try and explain them, although that perspective is not without its merits.
Between 7000–2500 BC we find the Hunters Period. The landscape was changing rapidly, the climate was more and more humid, owing to heavy rainfall, the dry valleys were filled with water, becoming perennial lakes encircled by lush forests. In this School, animals are nearly always depicted as being very big comparatively to the humans that are depicted as very small spear holding hunters. Academics interpreted this lack of scale as indicative of the fear that the beasts inspired, which in my opinion is utter rubbish. The fear they speak of, is but a projection of the fear of the interpreter, using his upbringing and culture, taking his reality, to where it does not belong. To me this difference in scale, it is a clear representation of Respect, of knowing one’s place in the Natural Order of things. Something that is not barbaric at all, on the contrary, it reveals a deep understanding and interconnection with Nature.
We now reach The Pastoral Period, and as some of you might have notices, many of this periods are overlapping, with this starting around 5000 BC, by this time as the amount of rainfall grew less and less, the thick forests gave way to savannahs, the art of this period show herds of domestic cattle, and scenes of land cultivation and long-horned cattle. It is also noticeable a new naturalistic style of depicting everyday life with greater focus on detail. Bodies are now slim and triangular shaped with heads shown as sticks.
The fifth period, is the one that lead to the creation of this video, and its called as Horse or Garamantian Period, lasting from 2000 to 1200 BC, we now find depictions of horses and chariots. Here I do not exclude that this crude drawings of chariots were done to serve as a teaching of what to expect, and to avoid them at all cost. Herodotus informs us the it was the Libyan Garamantes who first invented the wheel, this has been used a a confirmation of his claim, since Academics think this representations done by the Garmantes, while to me, they could very well belong to the Troglodytae.
The final school of art is The Camelin or Camel Period, starting about 100 BC and attesting to the appearance of the camel in the Sahara. Academia tells us that the harsh images found during this period are indicative of rough times caused by heat wave that eventually led the inhabitants to move or even to become extinct, that to me is most likely coinciding with the end of this long succession of different schools of art.
I would also introduce another school of art, The Period of the Idiot, or the School of the ignorant. I jest, but the defacing, spraying and graffitiing of some sites due to religious beliefs, is not only out of context in its justifications, as it is ignorant of the roots of the religion they profess to uphold offended in the first place. More than a thousand years have past since their extinction, and still, they raise fears that are addressed with aggression.
Lets now dive once again into old reports of these Troglodytes, this time by Strabo in The Geography of Strabo, it reads as follows:
Neighbouring this people are the Acridophagi, who are blacker than the rest and shorter in stature and the shortest-lived; for they rarely live beyond forty years, since their flesh is infested with parasites.They live on locusts, which are driven into this region in the spring-time by strong-blowing south-west and western winds. They cast smoking timber in the ravines, lighting it slightly (and thus easily catch the locusts), for when they fly above the smoke they are blinded and fall. The people pound them with salt, make them into cakes, and use them for food. Above these people lies a large uninhabited region, which has pastures in abundance. It was abandoned by reason of the multitude of scorpions and tarantulas, the tetragnathi,as they are called; these once prevailed and caused a complete desertion by the inhabitants.
Defining Acridophagi — A supposed locust-eating people in ancient ethnography, located by Diodorus Siculus, Jerome, Pliny the Elder, and Strabo, variously in Ethiopia and Libya, then known as Parthia.
Contrary to what I was expecting, there are many mentions of the so called Troglodytes. With this in mind and combining that data with more than 10000yrs of art, spread by a large area with more than 10000 sites identified and perhaps many more yet to be found, even if only some of this sites and schools are of their doing, there is no lack of empirical evidence of their existence. This alone makes it nigh impossible to deny the presence of a ethnic group that looked as primitive in their ways, as we now see those that reported their presence in the first place. But with a difference, to us, a Garmantian or a Greek, would still look human, familiar, the same could not be told by the Garmantes about the Cave-Dwellers. Struggling to keep this video short, due to the vast material available that tempts me to show more and more examples, I will refrain myself, but not before I present one more before my own understanding of this subject. This time reading from a modern day reflection about the troglodyte riddle that was written by Chuck Morgan of whom, I did not manage to find any other reference, beyond the fact that this is his reaction to HOMO MONSTROSUS, a very interesting article in the 1968 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN by Annemarie de Vaal Malefijt. This is what Chuck Morgan says:
“For 2,000 years, most educated men believed that remote areas were inhabited by monstrous hairy races. It was only with the 19th century that it became clear that there was only one species of living men. When Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) worked out his monumental classification of natural things in the 18th century, he included the species Homo Monstrosus. By Homo Monstrosus he meant a species related to Homo sapiens but markedly different in physical appearance. To do Linnaeus full justice, he was quite aware that there were men on all continents who belonged to the species Homo sapiens. He nonetheless believed, as many of his contemporaries and predecessors did, that in remote areas there were manlike creatures with weird characteristics. The belief in the existence of monstrous races had endured in the Western world for at least 2,000 years. During that time a rich assortment of semi human creatures were described by explorers and travellers, whose accounts were probably based largely on malformed individuals and the desire to enhance their own fame at home.”
I am hoping that at least some of you will understand how the reasons used for the non existence of this creatures can be used to do just the opposite. Obviously, most of those reports were fictions with no truth in them, but not all. And I believe this Cave Dwellers of Fezzan are one of this examples. With this stated, I will begin with my conclusions.
First of all, it seems very likely that the area of Fezzan was already inhabited by these swift of foot human-like beings even before the Younger Dryas, second, and because of the Younger Dryas changes and challenges upon the globe’s biodiversity, several other groups of humans that did not inhabited that region, came to live there and clashed more than coexisted with the region residents of old, the Homo Erectus communities. Being many still by the arrival of the modern humans, what happened then is not that different to what the recently arrived Non Native Americans, did to the Native ones. Different times, different ways, some result. I believe the native Homo Erectus were actively hunted by the predecessors of the Garmantians as a civilization, that at first, around 2000BC, being divided in several tribes that fought one another, in the search for supremacy of the Sahara, that was eventually gained by the Garmantians, gaining complete control over the area from around 1000BC, all the way until 400AC, the time when Rome finally decided to take action and take their territory and caravan routes. While all this unfolded, the older residents, The Homo Erectus communities, kept to themselves, and their ways, but having less and less territory to move, their numbers, severely reduced, either by the action of organized hunts done since the Pre Garmantians, that preserved that costume all the way into our age, Therefore the Homo Erectus, either by their lack of resources, or even by wars among themselves for the better spots, as their were pushed further and further into the desert. On the other hand, it is easy to understand why the Garmantians hunted them, either by their primitiveness, or by their strange appearance or even their strange culture, that even then, inspired fear that was dealt with by answering it with blind violence. Most likely the Garmantes feared them to attack the caravans, and perhaps in their despair, they did, since this events were always hushed down to avoid lack of confidence from the merchants that wanted their material taken in their caravans.
I have chosen Homo Erectus because of their particular Bio-Morphology, that when studied, reveal that their skeleton is, from all Homo Genus, the most adapted to walk or run, being, due to a better arrangement of bones and muscle, not only much faster they could also run longer than modern humans, this despite their ribcage being more like Neanderthal than Sapiens, which made them more like rugby players than athletes to the eye. A feature that allied to the description of their looks leaves me little doubt that the Homo Erectus, is the one that better fits the descriptions. The fact that Homo Erectus is not believed to have complex language, that also fits the description.
So one can speculate that while more and more modern humans, namely Homo Sapiens, migrated into the Sahara region, including Fezzan, and kept evolving socially, culturally and morphologically, all due to increasing contact with other Homo Sapiens cultures and societies that were thriving across the Mediterranean, the dwindling Homo Erectus remained faithful to its ways and beliefs, and contrary to what they would have done in the past, that would be to move into more fertile grounds, they were as if under siege from all sides as Homo Sapiens build more and more villages and towns, prohibiting any hope of passage into better lands without being slain. They became imprisoned in their own land, Being their culture based in a humid forest environment filled with game, that slowly but steadily change into becoming more and more arid, leaving them to eat Lizards and snakes, after all, they were hunters and to be honest, during the last centuries of their tormented existence, there was little more to hunt beyond reptiles. This process must have been like frogs in cold water, by the time they detect the heat it is too late. In time, their genetic pool became more and more constricted, leaving them prone to illness and congenital anomalies. Intelligent as they were, they must had a clear vision of their doom. In fact, I connect the detail that they shared their wives, as a desperate attempt to produce offspring.
From my research, it is clear to me that if a date is to be given for the extinction of the very last Homo Erectus, I would say from the 7th to the 10th Century of this age. Although I doubt, that the Fezzan Cave Dwellers ever reach that far in time, with their time ending around the 1st CE AD if not sooner. I say up to the 10th CE in general because that is when sightings across the planet cease to be fresh reports, to become memoires of old tales. However this raises new questions. There are many accounts of strange creatures that like in the classical age, are still being reported by travellers and explorers of the modern era. So I ask, is it possible that one of the oldest beings to be classified as Homo, has lived all the way through the Younger Dryas and into the first millennium, becoming extinct by several factors, either extermination by another of the Homo Genus namely that the Sapiens kind, Dramatic loss of habitat due to climate change, or by inter breeding as it is shown in the DNA record of modern humans. It is not that far fetched to imagine that other Homo, lets say a larger version of the Erectus kind, living in an area that is to this day either unperturbed or seldom visited by modern man, could still exist as long as the environment remains within the boundaries that allow him to survive. Thus giving some insight to all sights of strange bipedal creatures in the remote parts of the world.
Thank you for reading this far.
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Until our next meeting,
You can find this in video at History Myths & Legends
